We treat autonomy as a moral right, yet we’re entrenched in systems—bureaucracy, family, work, social mores—that manipulate and constrain us.
We’re all on the same ship, never fully free.
So to protect our own autonomy from manipulation, we manipulate: shaping others toward our values, demanding their alignment to enhance our agency.
The paradox is structural: an incoherence we inherit and can’t escape, converting us into hypocrites because we believe a set of values that people continue to espouse as true.